In the comments to my review of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, there was a side discussion about the enigmatic title. Written in 1980, the book was a critical and popular success, selling over 50 million copies worldwide. This strange, long (538 pages), and difficult book set in 1327 formed the basis of a 1986 film starring Sean Connery as the English Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and Christian Slater as his Italian Benedictine novice assistant Adso of Melk. My review of the book was very negative, seeing it as pretentious. The second edition of the book published in 1983 has an unusual feature for a novel, in that it has a postscript by the author where he discusses both the book and the writing of novels in general. He begins with a discussion of the title of this book and the role of novel titles in general.
There is nothing about roses anywhere in the book. The word itself makes its only appearance in the form of an untranslated Latin phrase stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, which are the words that end the book. (There are many chunks of untranslated Latin throughout the text that contribute to the book’s difficulty.)
Eco writes in his postscript:
The Title and the Meaning
Since the publication of The Name of the Rose I have received a number of letters from readers who want to know the meaning of the final Latin hexameter and why this hexameter inspired the book’s title. I answer that the verse is from De contemptu mundi by Bernard of Morlay, a twelfth-century Benedictine, whose poem is a variation on the ubi sunt theme (most familiar in Villon’s later Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan). But to the usual topos (the great of yesteryear, the once-famous cities, the lovely princesses: everything disappears into the void), Bernard adds that all these departed things leave (only, or at least) pure names behind them. I remember that Abelard used the example of the sentence Nulla rosa est to demonstrate how language can speak of both the nonexistent and the destroyed. And having said this, I leave the reader to arrive at his own conclusions.
A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations. But one of the chief obstacles to his maintaining this virtuous principle is the fact that a novel must have a title.
A title, unfortunately, is in itself a key to interpretation. We cannot escape the notions prompted by The Red and the Black or War and Peace. The titles that show most respect for the reader are those that confine themselves to the name of the hero, such as David Copperfield or Robinson Crusoe; but even this reference to the eponymous character can represent an undue interference of the author. Pere Goriot focuses the reader’s attention on the figure of the old father, though the novel is also the story of Rastignac; or of Vautrin, alias Collin. Perhaps the best course is to be honestly dishonest, as Dumas was: it is clear that The Three Musketeers is, in reality, the tale of the fourth. But such a luxury is rare, and it may be that the author can allow himself to enjoy it only by mistake.
My novel had another, working, title, which was The Abbey of the Crime. I rejected it because it concentrates the reader’s attention entirely on the mystery story and might wrongly lure and mislead purchasers looking for an action-packed yarn. My dream was to call the book Adso of Melk —a totally neutral title, because Adso, after all, was the narrating voice. But in my country, publishers dislike proper names, and even Fermo and Lucia was, in its day, recycled in a different form. Otherwise, Italian fiction offers few examples of this kind of title —Lemmonio Boreo, Rube, Metello—a handful compared with the legion of Cousin Bettes, Barry Lyndons, Armances, and Tom Joneses that people other literatures.
The idea of calling my book The Name of the Rose came to me virtually by chance, and I liked it because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante’s mystic rose, and go lovely rose, the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name,’ a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, the Rosicrucians. The title rightly disoriented the reader, who was unable to choose just one interpretation; and even if he were to catch the possible nominalist readings of the concluding verse, he would come to them only at the end, having previously made God only knows what other choices. A title must muddle the reader’s ideas, not regiment them.
Nothing is of greater consolation to the author of a novel than the discovery of readings he had not conceived but which are then prompted by his readers. When I wrote theoretical works, my attitude toward reviewers was judicial: Have they or have they not understood what I meant? With a novel, the situation is completely different. I am not saying that the author may not find a discovered reading perverse; but even if he does, he must remain silent, allow others to challenge it, text in hand. For that matter, the large majority of readings reveal effects of sense that one had not thought of. But what does not having thought of them mean?
A French scholar, Mireille Calle Gruber, has discovered subtle paragrams that link the simple (in the sense of the poor) with simples (in the sense of medicinal herbs); and then finds that I speak of the “tare” of heresy. I could reply that the term “simple,” in both uses, recurs in the literature of the period, as does the expression “mala pianta,” the tare, or poisonous herb, of heresy. Further, I was well aware of the example of Greimas on the possible double reading (semioticians call it “double isotopy”) that occurs when the herbalist is referred to as a “friend of the simple.” Did I know that I was playing with paragrams? It is of no importance to reply now: the text is there and produces its own effects of sense.
…The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.
Eco seems to have violated the idea he has just expressed at the end (and earlier where he says “A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work”) by explaining and interpreting his own work. He says that this is not what he is doing, claiming that “The author must not interpret. But he may tell why and how he wrote his book.” I find the distinction to be be tenuous but the essay was interesting, more interesting than the book itself, actually.
It is now a commonplace to say that the meaning ascribed to a work of art does not lie exclusively with its creator. The artist may have some idea what they were trying to convey but once the work is put out, each member of the public can make their own meaning and interpretation of it and no one of them, including the artist, can claim to have the last word. Some creative artists go as far as to say that they did not have any meaning in mind when they were creating but that the finished work just somehow emerged. According to Eco, Michelangelo is supposed to have said that sculpture amounts to freeing from the block of stone the figure already defined in it.
I find that idea, that there was no intent involved in the process of creation, unpersuasive. Artists and other creatives are notoriously unreliable when it comes to describing their own process of creation, constructing a story after the work is finished that bears little relation to what actually happened. As I write in my book The Great Paradox of Science, scientists also tend to rewrite history when describing how they arrived at their final results. But while accepting that no one, including the author, can claim final authority over interpretation of the work, Eco himself is scornful of the idea that the characters in a novel “have an autonomous life and the author, in a kind of trance, make them behave as they themselves direct him. That kind of nonsense belongs in term papers.”
Choosing a good title for any piece of writing is not easy. I continually struggle with finding titles for my books or essays or even blog posts. The best choice depends on the purpose of the piece. In my writings (which are all non-fiction) I am usually trying to make a persuasive argument for some point of view and try to find a title that gives the reader some hint of what the piece will be about and what my approach to the subject is. That is also the goal of most headline writers for newspapers and magazines. In some sense, these titles are a form of clickbait, seeking to invite the reader into reading the piece. But the word ‘clickbait’ is also used in a literal and pejorative form, where the goal is not to provide the reader with some useful or interesting information but just to lure them into clicking on the link because that click alone generates ad revenue. Those titles can often be deceptive, greatly exaggerating the importance of what the link contains. In the online world, one learns to quickly recognize those purely clickbait titles and ignore them.
That goal of enticing the reader to explore the contents of the book by giving some idea of what it contains is also pursued by many writers of novels but Eco argues against doing that, saying that with a novel, the reader should be given as much latitude as possible to make their own interpretations and meaning, and thus should not be influenced by the title which should be as neutral and uninformative as possible, say by just being a name of someone or something.
I had not thought much, or indeed at all about this question though I did have a post expressing my puzzlement about the title The Three Musketeers that Eco also writes about. He suggests that Dumas may have been deliberately diverting attention away from the actual main character.
Maybe, maybe not.
I am not that convinced that a title inhibits the readers range of interpretations that much. I think it is another example of Eco overcomplicating things. Even his chosen title, that contains an allusion to a much-quoted line in Romeo and Juliet, suggests that what one calls something is irrelevant to the merits of what it is. Would a reader’s expectations be restricted all that much if instead of Moby Dick, Herman Melville had called his book Ahab’s Quest? I don’t think so. Some titles such as Great Expectations or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold or The Hound of the Baskervilles make the book more memorable.
Choosing a title is (or should be) the author’s prerogative though in the commercial world, other players in the publishing business also get a say. Eco’s choice worked for him in that the title is memorable even if it supposedly is meant to signify nothing.
This attitude is very similar to Tolkien’s. From the foreword of LotR:
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
This book and its author have really gotten under your skin. I’m wondering if part of the problem you’re having with it is the purpose of writing? You approach writing from a science and logic perspective. Not surprising since science was your job for many years. Eco seems to be writing from a psychological and more fluid perspective. I’m seeing it as a stylistic clash between, say, Bloodline Detective (a murder has been committed, here are the steps the detectives took to finding out the killer based on DNA) and the 1980s Twin Peaks (a murder has been committed, the detective found the solution in dreams of backward-talking dwarves and eating diner pies).
It’s fine if a style doesn’t suit your tastes.
I found Eco’s essay uninteresting and gave up on it two-thirds of the way through. It didn’t sound in my head like he believed his own words, so I decided why should *I* read them?
Maybe the dude just has compulsive logorrhea?
OK, I did a deeper dive. Nobody else has mentioned: That is not the quote! This is the line from Bernard of Cluny (or Morlay--both are used):
(Emphasis added.)
Bernard is talking about Rome, not a rose. He says the name “Rome” remains, but now it’s just nothing but name.
Here’s more surrounding verse from Bernard:
(Where is the voice of Cicero now? Where is the anger of Cato?
Where are Regulus or Romulus or Remus? Rome keeps its
original name, but that’s all. How quickly strong hearts and
bodies bounce away like a ball down a hill.)
Obviously, Eco is punning here (or he doesn’t know Latin? 😉 ) (?) But then, even in his afterword, he does not mention his substitution of “rosa” for “roma”.
ahcuah @#4,
Thanks for that. Very insightful. But now I am even more puzzled about the title.
Incidentally, autocorrect may have messed up your translation. Do you wish me to change Regular to Regulus and Romumus to Romulus? If you wish, I can also change your lines to correspond to the six lines of the original Latin verse.
Katydid @#2,
You are right that the book irritates me but I think for a different reason than the one you suggest. I am comfortable with the fact that writers seek to convey different things and use different styles. I am also comfortable with just bad writing. But what I find annoying is pretension, trying to impress rather than enlighten, and that is what to me Eco seems to be doing.
One of my most hated tasks is coming up with headlines for my posts — essentially titles for every short work. I am supposed to somehow sum up the central point of the writing, but if I could make my point in 10 words or less I’d never need anything more than BlueSky.
No, I never know how to reduce my work to a title, and I feel for Eco here.
Mano @6: Pretension, like beauty (and art) is in the eye of the beholder. While reading The Name of the Rose, I never got the impression that Eco was saying “look how clever I am”. As I said in a previous thread, mileage varies.
CD @7: If I were writing articles, stories or novels (as if!), I’d be tempted to follow the example of numerous writers; choose a line from a famous poem which is at least tangentially related to the topic. Examples; The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, A Handful of Dust, The Remorseful Day, Consider Phlebas, No Country for Old Men, etc.
The Rose/Rome thing got me curious, so I searched on “rose as a religious symbol”. Among other things, in Christianity it means purity of faith, love, virtue, etc. Additionally, cathedrals in particular had “rose windows”, which are named after Roman church (round) windows.
As for the quote, I grew up speaking Italian in the home, and I translated the phrase as: It was named rose (and henceforth the name remained the same), but all we have of it (now) is the name. Conflating Rome and the church (as with the rose windows in cathedrals), you could make the reach that “it’s called the church, but it’s now the church in name only.” E.g. what’s going on now (murder in the church) is not what the church was meant to be.
Just a thought.
To me, it’s way less annoying than endless page after page of “they passed by a stone in the road and named it X, and then they passed a hill and named it Y, but the elves called it A and the dwarves knew it at Something Else” until you want to scream, “WHO CARES?!?!”
Mano @4. Oh, geez. I didn’t even notice the autocorrect when I previewed it. Yes, please fix my “translation” regarding Regulus and Romulus. Regarding the six lines, as far as I can tell they came through correctly (at least as I look at them now). [R & R look correct in my current preview--we’ll see if they get “fixed” as I post.]
As I think about it more, as a physicist (I am one, too) and educator, your goal is to understand and to explain as best you can. But I get the impression that much of Eco’s goal was to display his erudition, hence all the Latin. But also as a mystery novel, it’s OK to include other mysteries that the reader might like to puzzle over. That can be fun, too, sometimes. Heck, I did it myself wondering the context of the line, trying to find it, and then trying to translate it. (And, I assume, we are enjoying the puzzle ourselves right now.)
So, my guess is that in researching the book (which obviously would have required reading such 11th century sources), he found the quote, noticed the pun/correspondence, related it to Shakespeare, and decided it would make a great title. And in the afterword, he showed the modified quote as a(n erudite) puzzle for the cognoscenti.
BTW, Google Books used to be useful finding such old texts. But they’ve “improved” it to the point that stuff that used to be there no longer is. Took me forever to find the complete poem.
BTBTW, I’ve been recently translating a Middle French text, in which the author regularly quotes Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (which was the style of the time to show one’s scholarliness). So, in translating, do I keep those in the original so as to make it echo the style of the time, or translate it for the reader? My current solution is to put the translation into a footnote. Don’t know how well that would have worked for a mystery novel.
Katydid @9. As you are obviously aware, translation is always interesting (and fraught with issues). How much does one wish to remain faithful to the specific words vs the concept that they are trying to convey? (And I am not a good Latin translator.) A different translation might be
The word “glory” is not in the original at all, but, to me, helps the translation. And for the last 2 lines, there is no mention of a hill at all, but how does one convey a slipping, whirling sphere passing by quickly? (And I may have gotten that wrong, too!)
But, yeah, part of the fun of language, homologies, and ambiguities is being able to notice and draw parallels between somewhat similar items and expressions. So I’m saying your take on it all is as good as (and has a good chance at being better than) mine.
@Ahcuah: this is my third post, and therefore should be my last. Thanks for your kind words. I also am not a Latin translator, but I speak a language descended from Latin. Obviously there could be aspects I’m missing--what I gave what the message I got from it. Translation is art as well as work and it works fine for simple nouns, but once you get into concepts and culture, there can be multiple correct translations.
In the case of the book, the characters in it are immersed in the church and presumably fluent in Latin, leading to some wordplay that might take some work for the average reader to determine.
The late, great Sir Terry Pratchett played with language and culture all the time in his books. It wasn’t until the second time I lived in England and had more time to immerse myself in the culture that I understood the messages he was conveying in otherwise-innocuous-seeming words.
So did Cervantes in his book Don Quixote; there’s a section where the Don is about to do battle with what he believes to be a pugilistic giant (and is, in fact, a windmill). His tenant farmer-turned-squire, Sancho Panza, is worried about the Don doing damage to the windmill and therefore the two of them running afoul of the law and having to pay fines to the court--“costillos”, which also means “ribs”, so the Don believes Sancho Panza is worried about him getting his ribs broken. The humor depends on the reader understanding both senses of the word.
#10 ahcuah
As I understand it, the improvements arise from tweaks to the almighty search algorithm, intending that it locate what it thinks is the most likely useful item, rather than doing an actual trawl through the available items like a conventional library search would do. Same goes for youtube and all Google searches. The idea is to increase the efficiency of the computation required to search such a gargantuan body of material, though the net effect has been to ruin the actual search function.
ahcuah @#10:
It works well. My 1986 paperback copy of “Der Name der Rose” has the translations from Latin at the end of the book. Put a bookmark there, and you are good to go. Btw., the bookmark provided with the book has a list of the “dramatis personae,” and their functions. Quite clever by the publisher.
Ah, but you must remember this about the Name of the Rose: ol’ Umberto Eco was thumbing his nose at us.
His life’s work was the study of semiotics, so he built that story while being fully cognizant of its inner workings, its references and effects on the reader and had huge fun with it all (and ultimately earning cartloads of money which he spent on rare books, his guilty pleasure).
Also, the presence of Latin was no affectation in his case: his uni studies were centered on the history of heresies in Europe, so he had to wade through a lot of medieval Latin and obscure texts, it was second nature to him. Plus, average Italians of that vintage had to study Latin, be they willing or not -- I personally was bludgeoned with seven years of it. Fun times…